Armchair Hockey Scout

Ask the book

2026-27 edition Ask a direct question about this edition of the book — who, how many, how common, which group more — and it is answered with a table computed on this page from the edition’s index: the season line, height and age, the on-ice percentiles, the grades and the traits read out of every report. Ask for a view on named players — what a comparison comes down to, what makes a man — and you get the book’s reading of their own pages, and only those. The model turns your question into a query and phrases the result, or reads the pages it is handed; it never originates a figure, and an answer carrying a figure that is on neither the table nor the pages is withheld. It does not forecast, and it says so when a question is outside what the book holds.

Tables are computed on this page from the 2026-27 edition’s index; readings rest on the players’ own pages; the model never counts. Twenty questions an hour.

Reid Schaefer

Photo by Jenn G from Seattle, WA, CC BY-SA 2.0

Reid Schaefer

Nashville Predators Left Wing #49

6-5, and the 3rd percentile in expected goals.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2025-26NSH47628-12170013915.49:38
2026-27 so far—————————————
Career—47628-12170013915.49:38

This Season So Far

The 2026-27 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.

Last Season

6 goals and 2 assists in 47 games — 8 points, minus-12, at 9:38 a night with 17 penalty minutes. His first NHL season, at 22.

The Finesse Game

The shot location is the encouraging part: 47 per cent of his unblocked attempts from inside 20 feet, median 20, and 6 goals from 59 tries.

2 assists in 47 games is the whole of the playmaking, and there is no evidence any is coming.

The Physical Game

6-5, 226, and it is the case for him. He goes to the net, he finishes checks, and he is difficult to move once he has position.

The skating is the problem and it is a serious one. He cannot forecheck at NHL pace, which is why a man this size gets under 10 minutes a night.

The Intangibles

39.6 per cent of the expected goals — 3rd percentile — and 42.7 per cent of the shot attempts, fourth. Across 446 minutes those are among the worst figures in this edition.

Nashville was a poor club and this is well below even that.

He is 22, a 32nd overall pick traded from Edmonton, and the shot chart is the one thing arguing for him. Everything else on the page says a fourth-liner who cannot yet play at this speed.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 446 minutes

Expected goals
39.6%
2nd pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
42.7%
4th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 9 for, 21 against. Expected: 13.7 and 20.9.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted
Report
6th
Numbers
2nd

The two rank him within 4 points of one another. It was written with these numbers on screen, so the agreement is not corroboration — the arithmetic is on both sides of it.

Both bars are percentiles among the 656 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 62 on their own scale — against every other report's mean. The numbers bar ranks his share of expected goals. A gap is a disagreement about where he belongs, not two scales talking past each other.

Tracked

NHL Edge, 2025-26 · 47 games

Top speed
22.3 mph
52nd pct

fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.2

Bursts over 20 mph
1.57 a game

how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes

Distance
1.65 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
84.5 mph
48th pct

one shot; the league's average best is 83.6

A top speed is a season's best, and a man who takes more shifts gets more tries at one; the percentile is the feed's own, against every skater, and says less between a top-pair defenceman and a fourth-line wing than it does between two men in the same job. The counts are shown per game for the same reason.

Recent form

Last 20 appearances, 2025-26, oldest first

1

points in his last 10 games — 1 goals, 0 assists, 13 shots

Each bar is one game by points. Filled bars are games he scored in.

Usual linemates

2025-26 · 446 minutes at five-on-five

Share of his five-on-five ice time spent alongside each player, measured from shift charts. Special teams are excluded: a power-play unit is not a line.

Why the numbers land there

Five-on-five, 2025-26

The club
NSH took 47.8% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 39.6% — 8.2 below the club he did it on.
The role
Fourth line, 446 minutes at five-on-five — 14th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Michael McCarron38.8%40.2%50.4%
Fedor Svechkov39.2%39.8%49.6%
Nick Perbix38.8%40.0%46.0%

38.8% together, 40.2% for him apart and 50.4% for McCarron apart. McCarron was better away from him while his own share held, which is a mark against him more than for him.

Expected-goal share while both were on the ice, and for each man in the minutes he played without the other. Apart is the pair subtracted from his own totals. It does not settle who was carrying whom — apart from each other, both were still playing with somebody — but it does say whether the share travelled when the pairing broke up.

Where he shoots from

goal on goal missed

59 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 6 of them goals. His median goal came from 22 feet. 47% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 24% from beyond forty.